You can't do a review of any of the "Stainless Steel Rat" series without first discussing the main character, Slippery Jim diGritz. To the uninitiated, Slippery Jim is a thief who steals with a smile on his face. He does not use weapons or violence, he never hurts or kills people. Instead, he prefers to use his intelligence and wit to steal his money. And Slippery Jim sees himself as set apart from society, far more intelligent and able than the rest of society, and does not wish to conform at all. All of this made Slippery Jim was one of my favourite characters when I was a teenage reader. Indeed, he is quite a fun character to read, even today.

But to the story of "The Stainless Steel Rat"... Slippery Jim, lovable rascal, has pulled one con too many, and has been caught by the police. Obviously, the one thing to do with a criminal like Slippery Jim, having caught him, is to make him a fellow police officer. Now enlisted in The Corps, Slippery Jim finds out there are plans afoot to build an intergalactic battleship, and he sets out after the mastermind behind all of this, who turns out to be a woman named Angeline - violent, ruthless, intelligent, and quite beautiful.

All is not well in the Slippery Jim universe, however. There's a lack of inventiveness present in the novel. Harrison employs SF tropes as he needs to progress the story, but the social attitudes of the time are largely identical to that of the early 1960's, when the book was written. There's no question of how social attitudes might change in the future, and I think that is a shame.

A bigger problem, though, is that there is a casual sexism present in much of the novel. There seems to be a presumption that women are the weaker sex, that women are somehow less capable than men, in spite of the fact that Angeline outmanoeuvres Slippery Jim in their every encounter. Angeline is required to work through other men to get what she wants. A case could be made that such discrimination occurs because of the Breakdown that occasionally gets mentioned in the book (apparently, the links between different planets was broken, and is slowly being re-implemented) but I would not be buying such an argument.

I quite enjoyed reading "Stainless Steel Rat". I quite enjoyed the main character, Slippery Jim. And "Stainless Steel Rat" is one of my favourite books. That all said, I can at the same time acknowledge that there are some flaws in the novel. There is a casual sexist theme running throughout the book, and there is a lack of inventiveness present in the world-building. But the story is quite fun (in spite of a few inconsistencies) and the character Slippery Jim is a hoot. ( )

Harry Harrison sticks to the point in this novel "The Stainless Steel Rat". It is a good quick read, when most scifi today is bogged down and several hundred pages long, alot of it ultimately meaningless to the story, It is a good book to read between those. It gets the story out. with Minimal Descriptions, and Minimal Meanderings of thought.

After reading a book and you say. Ugh, that was long, Read this. Its short, Enjoyable, and will get your raring to go to read the next on your "to read" list. ( )

I'll keep this post short and sweet, like the book which took me three hours to read. This is the first Stainless Steel Rat book, and I think the best that I have read so far. Love it.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Harry_Har... ( )

Though this the fourth book chronologically, it's really the first one to read as it introduces the characters the best.

I thought this was a very funny book. As the series goes on, the particular humor gets a bit old as it's pretty much just more of the same with each volume. ( )

This book was OK, decent start but wandered off clumsily. Mostly it suffered from shallow characterization. I felt I was told what to think and feel about the characters and plot but that the events in the story didn't back it up. ( )